I don't believe the Embarc resort we stayed at Whistler was clocktower. It was next to the Fairmont up the hill from town. Nice resort with great walk on skiing (but I hope they updated the shabby chic furnishings since we visited).
Correct. The Intrawest/Embarc is not Clocktower. When I commented about DRI inventory I wasn't thinking about Embarc because that is partitioned off from everything else DRI.
KBP will be a great addition. They should have acquired when it was an Embassy Suites. IMO the location is better than HGV in Kihei. Right on the beach (no road) next to the Westin Kaanapali resort and the upscale Hono Koa resort. The KBP building needs renovation and updating. IMO the pink is hideous, the metal railings make it look cheap and the grounds seem to be missing something. The interiors need an update too based on the photos.
Fifteen or more years ago, Hilton was negotiating with Sunterra to buy both Embassy Vacation Club resorts in Hawaii - Ka'anapali and Po'ipu. This was before Sunterra added those resorts to Club Sunterra. I don't remember if they still had the Embassy name.
Sunterra actually didn't own those properties outright. Both were owned by partnerships, and Sunterra was the managing partner at each resort. So that made negotiations more difficult. We were told by several people at the resorts, who I believed to straight-shooters (including a couple of people involved at a senior level in resort management and operations and not with sales), that a deal was close to be signed and that when we came back next time it would be a Hilton property. Also that Ka'anapali was the property Hilton really wanted; Hilton was less enamored of Po'ipu because it wasn't set up like a hotel.
The sale was never completed, and after the deal collapsed Sunterra created the Sunterra Hawaii trust to add the EVR properties they controlled into Club Sunterra. They also bought out the partnerships and became sole owner of the Developer interests at the resorts, including the management contracts.
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This was also the period when Sunterra was going downhill financially, and resort maintenance was suffering throughout the entire Sunterra operation. We stayed at Ka'anapali one time, and saw that resort maintenance was lacking. While were at the resort, I made some posts on TUG about the resort conditions, providing specific details of what we noted. (Particularly a lot of corrosion of metalwork, including in the atrium area.)
A day later I got a call from the Ka'anapali resort manager, verifying that I was the person who had posted on TUG. He was quite gracious and immediately acknowledged the issues I had pointed and the maintenance under-funding. He asked to meet with me, and I agreed. He again acknowledged the issues I noted, said they were aware and had developed a program of corrective activities, including a corporate commitment to increased funding for the program over several years. He gave me a tour of the property describing the program and priorities. He also pointed a number of items that I hadn't seen that were clear issues.
In the cobwebbed recesses of my memory, I have a bit of a recollection that the sticky point that collapsed the Hilton purchase was an inability to agree on the price discount to be provided based on backlogged maintenance. Most likely, what Hilton considered to be minimum required rehabilitation to meet their standards was significantly higher than Sunterra's minimum standards, and they couldn't close the gap.
So here we are nearly 20 years later, and Hilton is finally getting their Ka'anapali resort. Interesting to think how different things would be now had that Hilton sale gone through.
Fairway Forest, Palazzo at Soriano, and Sunrise Ridge are all Diamond managed resorts.
